Celebration is a nearly universal longing. We hope for days of celebration when we’re in the midst of defeat. Little girls plan the celebration of their wedding day decades before their first committed relationship. Young athletes long for that end-of-season pizza party celebrating their team’s final gathering (While their parents celebrate the end of a seemingly endless stretch of shuttling kids back and forth to practices and games). When people reach the end of their lives, we gather for a memorial — a celebration of life. We were made to celebrate, to find joy, to discover our connection to each other in the shared experience of victory, memory, relief, and freedom.

We say often at Mariners MV that “Christians should be the ones to throw the best parties.” We’re in the season of so-called parties. Often, we’re dragged to them as dutiful spouses. We wear the name tags and play the games. We attend. We eat desserts. We smile. We forget the names of our spouses’ co-workers (every year). But, that’s hardly a celebration. It’s a work “function,” a “get-together.”

This Sunday night, is a celebration. We’ll sing… loudly and poorly. We’ll laugh… loudly. We’ll warm ourselves with cups of chili. We’ll eat cookies. We’ll light a Christmas tree. We’ll even throw real snow at each other. We will CELEBRATE. This is the best party of the season. Time and time again, people talk about the tree lighting as the thing that really initiates the Christmas season for them. Don’t miss it. Invite your friends. Dress warm. Sing loudly.

Looking forward to this Sunday (night),
– Jeff

P.S. FOR THOSE OF YOU WITH SMART PHONES
We’re going to conduct an incredibly cool synchronized light show with our phones during
the Tree Lighting. To make this happen, you’ll need to download a free app called “WHAM CITY LIGHTS.” It simply allows your phone to “talk” to the other phones in the room for synch-ing purposes. We’ll remind you on Sunday night. But, downloading ahead of
time will help to make the whole event go a bit more smoothly.
iPhone
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wham-city-lights/id580034697?mt=8
Android
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.whamcitylights&hl=en

I don’t know if “anticipation” is the right word for today. But, there certainly is a lot of build up to everything happening over the next few days. There seems to be a peculiar amount of “psyching myself up” for this extended weekend of giving thanks. Obviously, there’s the eating (I tend to find ways to justify the forthcoming feast by calling a long walk from the parking lot or the hoisting of my coffee cup “exercising”). Then, there’s all the driving and the travel. Of course, there’s the beautiful challenge of being with gathered family members.

While I can’t control what other people bring to eat at Thanksgiving, can’t control the driving habits of other people (try as I might), nor can I choose who my family is or is not, I can do something universally and sorely needed. I can listen. In the times between spurts of busyness and frenzied activity, when emails and office work take a back burner to family, we can labor to find fewer words, being more present this Thanksgiving.

Eugene Peterson writes, “listening requires unhurried leisure, even if it’s only for five minutes. Leisure is a quality of spirit, not a quantity of time. Only in that ambiance of leisure do persons know they are listened to with absolute seriousness, treated with dignity and importance. Speaking to people does not have the same personal intensity as listening to them.”

So, take whatever momentary pause there might be during these next few days and, rather than filling gaps with words and activity, listen. Listen to the people who have come to be around you: the boring ones, the ones who tell great stories, the ones who tell the same old stories poorly, the ones you love, the ones you’re supposed to love. Grant to them the most dignifying of all gifts: your undivided attention.

Happy Thanksgiving. See you on Sunday,
Jeff

“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.”
– 1 Chronicles 16:34

We need Thanksgiving. We need it desperately.

As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, we’ll have our minds squarely focused on the most important stuff — family, God, each other, and, more secretly (though more honestly), what we hope to acquire during the next six weeks. Slowly, our satisfaction with being with people we love fades and the longing for things-wanted morphs into a dangerous entitlement for things-needed. We’ll face the temptation to replace the miraculous God-come-near story of Christmas with the miraculously low “door busting” prices of black Friday, small business Saturday, and the recent addition to the shopping frenzy, “Cyber Monday.”

While our hearts begin in the right place, we’ll start wondering if all those people — our family — are thinking about us with our same unhindered altruism. They should be like us. We, in our shopping are only thinking about them, their needs. Our hope, though we never vocalize it, is that they would brave the same crowds and fight the same ascending debt-stress on our behalf  that we do for them, all in hopes of that they would buy for us our invariably needed thing that we can’t live without.

Certainly, we can’t act like we need it (whatever it is). Therein lies the art of it all. We clearly don’t want to start sounding like Ralphie from A Christmas Story. No, we’re much more subtle than he could ever dream. We won’t rattle off the specifics about the thing that we have to have. We won’t be talking about “Red Rider 200-shot range model air rifles, with a compass in the stock…” No, we don’t need anything, we’ll say. We’re just glad to be with our family. We’re grateful for what we already have. And, then we’ll start trying to figure out how we’ll live with disappointment. We counsel ourselves into dealing with people who let us down year after year. We’ll begin a speedy descent into resentment. And, before we even hit Christmas, we’re already bitter about not having something that may or may not have been purchased for us. But, that’s not what we want. We never intend that kind of thinking to be our thinking. We need a real lasting remedy for that insanity.

This weekend is going to be one of the most critical for our souls. We’re going to peer into the next few weeks, arming ourselves, not with greater patience for unruly shoppers, nor with with greater dedication to finding good deals. No, we’ll arm ourselves with the one thing the world wants to rob us of during this season, the one thing that frees us from that “spiral of want” — gratitude, because we need it, desperately.

I love meeting all of the people you’re continuing to include in our church community. I’m looking forward to another great Sunday together at Mariners MV.

– Jeff

Help stuff the bulletins on the 4th Sunday of every month. This is a great serve opportunity for your Rooted or Life Group. Contact Kim.